For The Love Of Port

Of course, I am mostly interested in your Port buying habits, but let's just stick with overall wine buying ... what percentage is done by internet vs. ordering by phone or an in-person visit to a brick and mortar wine shop?

For Port, about 15% of my current inventory was purchased B&M, which includes a few bottles bought in Porto. After that, it gets more complicated. What constitutes an internet sale? For my FTLOP buys I exchanged e-mails, and confirmed things by phone. I'll count that as internet. I bought some from TCWC in auctions, in which I used e-mail to submit my bids, but the auctions aren't online, so does that count? I'll say no, and just include the online auctions as internet. So 15% B&M, 10% offline auction, 75% internet. I've never done a full purchase by phone, but some of the internet sales have included phone calls to straighten things out and the like.

Port is probably 80%+ of my wine buying in the last year. For the non-Port in the last year, it was probably 50% internet, 50% B&M. Before the last year, going back 5 or ten years, I probably purchased 80% of my wine at the wineries or tasting rooms in wine country.

-Eric

Hmm... yeah, that's a bit hard to judge. If I find a bottle via wine-searcher, verify the price on the store's web site, but then call the store to order it does that count as an internet sale? I think it should, because without the internet that sale would not have happened. So I guess the partitioning for me is based on discovery - would I have found and purchased the bottle without the internet?

Like Eric, I won't count Roy's FTLOP offers as internet sales either. Sure, his newsletter is delivered over the internet and we used email to place our orders, but to me that's coincidental. To me a newsletter is just an electronic form of an older medium, and if the internet vanished one day Roy's newsletter could soldier on as an actual USnail letter.

So... roughly 200 bottles in the cellar, roughly 50 of 'em from Roy's offers, and only a handful of B&M purchases. I do buy cheap stuff pretty regularly at local stores, though, and those aren't reflected in my cellar because I usually drink them right away. Still... that probably puts me at approximately 65% Internet, 25% FTLOP, and 10% B&M.

That's for Port only. If we include all of the wine that I buy for my wife the FTLOP percentage would go down and the Internet percentage would go up. Most of the wine I buy for her comes from winestilsoldout.com, but a reasonable amount also comes from our local QFC grocery store. Wine is probably about a 70/30 split in favor of winestilsoldout.com, which would put the overall totals at about 70% Internet, 15% FTLOP, and 15% B&M.

100% local direct buying
---80% through retail at local restaurant (including purchases at wine dinners)
---20% local wine stores and groceries

0% online (with one disappointing exception)

Glenn E. wrote:Like Eric, I won't count Roy's FTLOP offers as internet sales either.

I was counting FTLOP offers as internet. Of my 75% Port via internet, about 12.5% of that is FTLOPortunities.

Eric Menchen wrote:

Glenn E. wrote:Like Eric, I won't count Roy's FTLOP offers as internet sales either.

I was counting FTLOP offers as internet. Of my 75% Port via internet, about 12.5% of that is FTLOPortunities.

Oops! So you did. Okay then... unlike Eric, I won't count Roy's FTLOP offers...

70% Internet; 30% local wine shop and local wineries

If auctions count as internet, than I am about 25% internet.

Thanks to those that have posted already and I truly hope that more are willing to post in this thread as this is REALLY interesting to see the diversity of buying habits. Thanks!